Clinton Focused on Ohio’s Working Families

Monday, February 18, 2008
Topics: Politics
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Barack Obama makes a campaign stop in Youngstown today even as he continues to focus on tomorrow's primary in Wisconsin. The Illinois Senator has some catching up to do with Hillary Clinton. She's comfortably ahead in the polls here and made several stops throughout the state last week. Clinton is tweaking her message to appeal to Ohio audiences and many of them don't need much coaxing. More from ideastream® politics reporter Kymberli Hagelberg.

An overflow crowd of almost three thousand, plus dignitaries as cheerleaders and a rousing high school band was all Senator Clinton and her fans needed to get into high spirits at her stopover in Lyndhurst at Brush High School Friday Evening.

Clinton has a lot going for her in Ohio. It is, after all, a blue collar state full of so-called “lunch-bucket Democrats.” They’ve tended to be in her camp more than Obama’s so far t his year. It’s also a state where 60 percent of the Democratic voters are women, and that too is an asset for Clinton.

Rosemary Reyes: “I will tell you the truth. I am of a certain age that I think it is the girls turn.”

That’s Rosemary Reyes, a fifty-something Portage County woman.

Reyes: Hillary is experienced, she’s intelligent; she has a proven performance record.  I think she is the complete package.

Brush High School graduate Nicole Summers, who brought her 10-year-old daughter along to the rally, is not quite sure who’ll she’ll vote for. She likes the idea of an African American as president. But she also says…

Summers: “If we had a mother as president, I think that would help us all.”

Alan “Bud” Goodman and his wife Renee of Shaker Square have been fans of Hillary, and Bill, from Day One, as they put it. Bud, however, is worried about Clinton’s chances. He thinks her campaign hasn’t been tough enough.

Goodman: If Hillary puts on the boxing gloves, she may make it yet.”

Getting too sharp-edged against Barack Obama is risky business with many voters saying they like both Democrats. For now, in Ohio, Clinton is letting surrogates take those jabs… Like Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who introduced Clinton to the Lyndhurst crowd.

Tubbs Jones: I go to church on Sunday morning for inspiration, but when I go to work on Monday, I want a leader who will step right up…Now I understand when people say, ‘You know, it must have been a tough decision for you to choose Hillary Rodham Clinton. Ladies and gentlemen, it was not a tough decision. She is the best candidate with the best experience, the best background.”

Senator Clinton saves her ammunition, not for Obama, but for corporate America, the rich and what she calls the oil men in the white house. In fact, she’s sounding more and more like former senator John Edwards. He hit similar class warfare themes before dropping out of the race.  Here’s a sampling.

Clinton: audio montage

The corporate greed pitch also shows up in the Clinton’s Ohio television ads.

Clinton commercial: “The Oil companies, predatory student loan companies, the insurance companies and the drug companies have had seven years of a president who stands up for them. I intend to be a president who stands up for all of you.”

Senator Obama starts his main push in the Ohio primary later today with a college campus rally.

Kymberli Hagelberg, 90.3.